


Burnt to the Core (but not broken)

by fate_incomplete



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied Slash, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, bucky is no damsel in distress, steve & bucky both have issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fate_incomplete/pseuds/fate_incomplete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the good and the bad get blurred around the edges and you end up moulding who you are out of the spaces left in between. Neither Bucky nor Steve are the men they once were, but maybe that doesn't matter. It's who they choose to be now that matters.</p><p>A year after the Winter Soldier came in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burnt to the Core (but not broken)

**Author's Note:**

> My first Marvel fic. Title is from Run to the Water by Live.

The thing is, there really never is any going back. The past is what it is, it’s not gonna suddenly change. Time and distance can twist it, put together faded memories into something not quite resembling the shape of things as they really were, but that doesn’t actually alter anything. Sometimes the good and the bad get blurred around the edges and you end up moulding who you are out of the spaces left in between.

Bucky sat on a balcony of the Avenger Tower, well more of a tiny little nook than actual balcony. It was one of his favourite places, one he had found a few weeks after he first came to the tower. Back when everyone still looked at him like he would kill them at any second, or like he was something broken beyond repair. Actually a lot of people still looked at him like that, he was just better at ignoring it now. Or using it to his advantage…or sometimes just for his amusement.

Some days he got a kick out of glaring at some young tech till they got off the elevator and took the stairs the rest of the way, leaving Bucky to smile to himself and throw a lazy salute to the security camera, knowing JARVIS kept a running tally for Stark. Or couldn’t resist making some comment just to see whatever new shrink they assigned him scribble furious notes about his unstable personality and murderous tendency. Notes that certainly found their way into his official file and passed along to the Director, as without fail the next time he saw Coulson he would pat Bucky on the shoulder with that half smile that was part disapproving and part fondness, like even now he couldn’t quite bring himself to reprimand a childhood hero, even when that hero was a formerly programmed Soviet super assassin.

He sat with one leg dangled over the edge of the balcony/nook, the other knee drawn up to his chest. It was always windy this high up, his still too long hair blowing back from his face. He refused to have it cut. He wasn’t the man in the old photos with an easy smile and an arm around Steve Rogers. Somehow the longer hair made the face looking back at him in the mirror feel more like his own, and not that of some long dead ghost.

He wasn’t James ‘Bucky’ Barnes any more. Some days he wasn’t sure who he was. But at the same time, he was Bucky Barnes, just one who had been broken down into pieces and put back together as something else. Needless to say, the shrinks had a field day with him. There seemed to have been a legion of them in those first days when the Winter Soldier had come in. He had even tried to let them help, had tried to string together what words he could but they were never adequate for what he was feeling…or not feeling. That hadn’t worked out so well anyhow, half remembered bits of his past taunting him till he had flipped and pinned one of them to a wall by the throat, it had taken a dozen armed men to pull him off.

Steve had been there of course, throttled the first person to point a gun at Bucky, and threatened anyone who dared insist the Winter Soldier was a lost cause. In the end it had been Coulson who had over ruled every shrink and security expert in the room. Had simply handed Bucky a gun and said he could either shoot everyone in the room, walk out the door, or join the team. Bucky had looked at the gun in his hand, at the hope and grief in Steve’s eyes, and handed the gun back to Coulson and told him to ask again in a month.

That was six months ago, and every month Coulson asked. It was becoming some sort of weird tradition that against all odds helped.

Bucky told anyone who asked that he didn’t remember much. It was almost the truth, in the same way as saying the sky is not green was the truth. A lot of his memories are out of context flashes that make next to no sense on their own. Some things came more clearly, but not things he wanted to share. He remembered the smell of rain and the way his breath fogged as he lined up a mark through his scope in eastern Ukraine. The sound of the door on the cryo chamber as it closed. The way his fingers ached as he lay on a roof top in the snow surveilling a target. The way he was always hungry but never asked for food after a mission.

Those memories he could deal with. It was the ones that woke him screaming in the middle of the night that were a harder to live with. The decade it took to be unmade, the countless wipes, pain for no other reason than it amused someone. He tried to push those memories back down, keep them hidden out of sight in some dark recess. Didn’t work real well, but he kept trying anyway.

There are other memories too. Ones of a skinny kid, of lying awake listening to him breathe in winter. Of following him into a war neither really returned from. Those memories brought a different kind of pain.

Bucky could hear someone moving around in the room behind him, the window he climbed out (the only way onto his nook) still open. He knew it was Steve without looking. Steve was the only one who ever picked things up. Bucky sometimes wondered if he deliberately left the apartment he had here in the tower a mess just to annoy Rogers. He kept three safe houses across town that were near on spotless, but somehow the bedroom, lounge and kitchenette he had here were always littered with clothes and weapons.

The apartment Bucky occupied in the Tower was one of the more modest, tucked away and isolated from the rest of the Avenger’s accommodation by a bevy of Stark’s less used labs. It wasn’t the one Stark offered him, which had been a sprawling, impersonal three bedrooms next door to Steve’s. Instead it had one large bedroom looking out over the city. It was a quiet haven. He had found it while wandering aimlessly the first week after Coulson had given his ultimatum and unofficially claimed it.

It still felt weird to think of something as ‘his’.

The Winter Soldier hadn’t had things, just missions, pain and the cold burn of cryo.

Bucky almost smiled as he listened to Steve randomly tidy. He wasn’t sure if Steve even knew he was doing it most of the time, and frankly he never really left it any tidier, just seemed to move things around, toss clothes in the direction of the laundry, like he needed an excuse to be in the room.

Steve seemed to finally give up on cleaning, coming over and leaning against the window frame, close enough Bucky could almost feel the heat of his shoulder.

“Hey Buck,” he said quietly.

Words were still something Bucky was working on. The Soldier had need of few except brief mission reports and screams of pain. Sometimes he held back words, worried that all that’ll come out is the echo of those screams.

He flicked his eyes to the left, briefly looking up at Steve in acknowledgement.

“Hey.”

Sometimes it feels like there are a litany of words clawing at his throat. Things that were never said in a lifetime long ago lost to the rush of ice cold wind as someone screamed his name. Things that grew in the ashes of the man he once was that could only come to light in the darkness of who he is now. They were words he didn’t understand yet, maybe he never would.

“You’re up early,” Bucky said quietly, studying Steve’s face.

The skyline was still dark, dawn still at least an hour away.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t call Steve on the lie. The dark smudges beneath his eyes, and that look he got sometimes, an open book. Some nights Steve didn’t sleep either. He tried to ignore the fact that part of the reason for that involved a train and the fall of a man Bucky would never be again.

“Stark tell you I was back?” Bucky asked after a while, wondering if he would ever be comfortable with the number of people who kept tabs on him.

“JARVIS,” Steve answered.

Bucky grunted. Even the damn building didn’t trust him.

He hadn’t spent more than a week at the Avenger Tower before he felt the need to slip away into the shadows once he was given the freedom to come and go as he pleased. He chased down leads on HYDRA, found his feet leading him to places he saw in dreams but could barely remember come morning. He never went far or for long

Bucky shifted, swinging his feet around and through the window, his shoulder bumping against Steve’s as he climbed back into his bedroom in one fluid movement.

“You look like shit, Rogers,” he grumbled as he walked to the large bed someone had made while he was away.

“And you’re a picture of vitality,” Steve replied, lips tilting hesitantly in a smile, like he wasn’t sure if the banter was okay. “You need to sleep more,” he added almost under his breath.

Bucky pretended not to hear as he pulled the clean sheets back and flopped onto the bed, legs sprawling carelessly as he settled on his back. He rarely slept when he wasn’t here in the Tower, and he had been gone three days this time. Giving into exhaustion was still too often the only way he could fall asleep, pushing past any sort of normal limits till his hands shook sometimes.

His eyes closed almost as soon as he hit the sheets, and he barely noted Steve pulling the covers over him before he was out.

When he woke an hour later, breathes coming in stilted gasps kept quiet by force of will, Steve was sound asleep in the old armchair by Bucky’s bed. He watched the steady rise and fall of Steve’s chest till the nightmares that clung to him let go enough to allow him to close his eyes again.

Bucky refused to admit how much easier it was to sleep while he could hear Steve in the room, when it would probably be better to just leave, and let Captain America forget him. On his better days he knew he didn’t deserve Steve Rogers, but he didn’t have many better days, just selfish ones where he couldn’t let go, couldn’t let Steve mourn the man who never made it home instead of living with the ghost of the damaged one who did.

If he was a better man he would leave, but Bucky Barnes was anything but a better man.

_......................_

The bed was empty when Steve woke. He stretched, shoulders stiff from slumping in the armchair. He could hear the shower turn off as he stood, legs just as stiff as his shoulders. Walking into the small kitchen area, his hands were on auto pilot as he made two cups of coffee.

“Pretty sure Stark gave you a ridiculous apartment with a bed so you didn’t have to sleep rough any more,” Bucky said as he re-emerged from the shower, hair wet and still dripping, catching Steve in the middle of a stretch as he tried to loosen the knots in his neck and shoulders.

“Yeah, he did,” Steve answered, handing Bucky one of the coffees.

“Maybe you should use it then.”

Bucky’s voice was clipped and distant. Steve looked down, stirring his cup needlessly. It was going to be one of those days where Bucky pushed him away, where he retreated. Sometimes it felt like every second day was one of those days. Steve can barely look Bucky in the eye when part of him can’t help being glad Bucky endured all that he did if it means still being right here with Steve in the future. It’s a shitty thought, but he can’t help it.

Steve had spent the days after Bucky fell wishing he had jumped right on after him. Hell, some small part of him had rode that plane down gladly, like he could follow Bucky after all.

“Don’t need a baby sitter,” Bucky mumbled under his breath.

The spoon clunked loudly on the counter when Steve set it down harder than intended. He sometimes got the urge lately to just grab Bucky by the shoulders and shake. He didn’t really know why or to what purpose. Maybe to make him see sense, see that he carried guilt that wasn’t his, that he wasn’t the old Bucky but that didn’t matter because he could be whoever the hell he wanted.

Maybe just so Steve could touch, and feel that he was really here.

Bucky had been gone for three days this time. Steve still felt on edge every time he left, like maybe this is the time he won’t come back again. Even though he always did. Steve held his tongue every time, wanting to ask where do you go? Do you want to leave? Do you remember anything?

He doesn’t ask.

Steve had asked so many times in the first few weeks after Bucky came back, and felt it like a knife to the gut every time Bucky closed off, or looked haunted, or like it was killing him that he couldn’t be who Steve remembered. He stopped asking. Bucky was the Winter Soldier, but he wasn’t at the same time. He wasn’t the same charming boy with an easy smile from before the war either. Steve had stopped asking, accepted whoever Bucky was now, though his insides still roiled with rage at what Hydra had done to him. He stopped asking and clung to the hope that whoever Bucky decided he was, was someone who would still stay with Steve, till the end of the line.

Steve gulped down the rest of his coffee, ignoring the burn of it down his throat. “I’m going for a run.”

Bucky looked up. “It’s still dark?”

Steve shrugged. He didn’t really care, he needed air, he needed….he had no idea what he needed. He had hardly slept in three days, yet still felt like if he didn’t keep moving he would shake apart.

The street was practically empty, breathe fogging in the cold air as Steve’s feet pounded on the pavement. He hadn’t really picked one of his usual running routes, just letting his feet take him wherever. He could see the dim shape of the Brooklyn Bridge before he even realised he was heading south. He swung left, making his way along the East River as the sun finally started to rise, his pace easing. The hour of sleep he’d had in the armchair not really enough.

It was 0630 and he had been running for almost two hours when the call came in. Coulson barley waiting for Steve to answer before diving into details about trouble in eastern Utah.

“On my way,” Steve answered when Coulson paused.

“Stark is heading back from Washington, he’ll meet you on route. Jets ready for take-off, I’ve got Barton and Barnes on it. They can set up some recon while they wait for you to arrive,” Coulson continued.

“Bucky?” Steve asked, surprised.

“He volunteered, said he was ready to take me up on my offer.”

“He did?”

“Is there a problem?” Coulson asked.

“No, that’s…great.”

“He was in the rec room with Barton when I called, Barton said he heard Utah and wanted in.”

“Hydra?” Steve guessed.

“That’s the intel.”

Steve made it back to the tower in thirty minutes, but Bucky & Barton were already gone. Coulson had a Quinjet waiting for him by the time Steve had suited up and grabbed his shield. He was alone in the back of the jet. Steve felt like his whole body was vibrating. His thoughts stuck in a loop of, Bucky accepted a mission, that’s a good thing right? But what if he falls again? I should have been there…rinse, repeat.

Steve was so distracted he jumped when Stark’s voice came over the comms.

“Cap we’re about two minutes out.”

The pilot confirmed, lowering the rear ramp for Steve to disembark. The pilot was going to drop Steve at the rendezvous before heading to Natasha’s location. Ever since Steve nearly got himself killed cleaning out a Hydra base on his own shortly after they got Bucky back, the others rarely let him anywhere near a mission without at least two of the Avenger’s along for the ride. Somehow they were under the impression Steve was being needlessly reckless.

“Oh shit!”

“Stark? What is it?” Steve gripped his shield tight as he was nearly tossed into the wall as the pilot banked hard.

“Barton and Barnes are under fire.” Stark replied, voice coming over the comms shakily.

Steve looked out the window in time to see Stark dodging gunfire with a semi controlled roll, before the jet’s turn bought the ground fight into sight. His breath caught in his throat. He could see at least a dozen presumably Hydra agents swarming the warehouse. He found Bucky almost immediately, out in the open fighting hand to hand, just as Barton jumped across a gap between buildings, rolling and firing in one fluid movement at a man about to attack Bucky from behind.

“Captain?” The pilot shouted over the comms.

“Circle back over top and drop me, then get clear,” Steve yelled back.

The last word was drowned out by the sound of bullets ripping through metal. Steve barely had time to think it sounded like 50cal, before he was ducking, bullets ripping through the compartment around him.

“We’re…ing down….Cap...ail…out,” the pilot’s comms were breaking up, the rush of wind and bullets nearly drowning him out.

The roar of blood in Steve’s ears was deafening as their descent brought them back closer to the fight. He saw Barton tumble over a railing, not moving as he hit the ground. He saw Bucky fighting alone, surrounded on all sides, a dozen or more enemy fallen at his feet. Everything seemed to be moving so slow, Steve screamed, the sound lost to white noise, as he tried to make his way to the rear ramp, trying to reach Barton & Bucky. He watched helpless as Bucky’s body recoiled from the shock of bullets he couldn’t defend against. He was half way out the door, ready to jump regardless of how high they were, when the rocket hit.

The scream of metal being torn apart and the rush of wind finally finding its way past the white noise as the quinjet veered violently, taking Bucky from view. The last he saw was Bucky slumped to his knees, refusing to fall as a dozen men approached with guns raised.

Then everything was swallowed by pain and blackness.

_......................_

Bucky saw the quinjet take heavy fire. Took a blow to the temple in the moment’s distraction. Steve was on that jet. Another blow landed hard against his ribs, knocking the breath from his lungs. He felt the ribs splinter, spun into a kick anyway, teeth gritted against the pain as he connected with one of his attackers. There were too many, even for the Winter Soldier. Especially when the Soldier was fractured, the unrelenting programming of the weapon all but gone.

Hawkeye had stopped firing, he noted somewhere in the back of his thoughts as he spun again, aiming low. This really wasn’t going to end well.

Movement in the corner of his eye caught Bucky’s attention, half a dozen more Hydra agents, armed and advancing. They opened fire, heedless of their own agents caught in the crossfire. Bucky grunted as the bullets hit, some hitting his body armour, but not all. He could taste blood as one hit hard, knocking him to his knees. Breathes coming in agonised gasps, each bringing more blood till it felt like he was choking on it. He swayed but wouldn’t fall.

The agents advanced but Bucky hardly noticed, eyes turned skyward, transfixed by the Quinjet as it exploded.

“STEVE!” He screamed, the word tearing at his shredded lung.

Bucky didn’t feel the blow that knocked him to the ground.

_......................_

Sound broke through the blackness first. It ebbed and faded. Everything felt like it was spinning as he tried to fight his way to the surface.

“Steve.”

He could feel a hand on his shoulder shaking gently. Steve opened his eyes, the blue sky overhead and Tony’s worried face blurring in and out. His ears were ringing, and Tony’s voice was muffled. His muscles screamed as he lifted a hand, taking two tries before he found Tony’s arm and gripped it tight, waiting for the world to right itself, for everything to stop swaying and make sense again.

His whole body ached, with a few sharper pains.

Tony was talking, but Steve still couldn’t quite make out the words, caught by how blue the sky was, and trying to figure out why he was looking up at it. He blinked slowly, eyelids heavy and wanting to stay closed. In the darkness behind his eyelids, all Steve could see was Bucky, fallen to his knees and surrounded. The world rushed back to him.

“Bucky!”

“Woah, hold still Cap.”

Stark held him in place as Steve tried to get to his feet.

“What happened?”

“Hydra was waiting for us. Barton and Barnes walked right into it. Barton took a header from three stories up after being shot, and the quinjet got blown up with you in it,” Stark answered as his hands tended whatever wounds Steve had yet to take note of.

Steve looked around, they were in a field, he could see smoke still rising from where the jet had gone down. Barton was lying on the other side of Stark, he didn’t look to be conscious, but was breathing at least.

“Bucky?”

Stark didn’t answer straight away.

“Stark, where is he,” Steve demanded, panic creeping in.

“Cap…” Stark put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, looking earnest. “Steve, we’ll get him back.

Steve felt like his heart stopped beating, his breath caught in his throat.

Hydra had Bucky, and Steve hadn’t reached him in time. Again.

“Why didn’t you go after him?” Steve commanded, accused.

“I tried,” Stark answered curtly.

Steve finally noticed Stark’s suit. The red blackened and charred, one shoulder piece torn open enough that Steve could see Tony’s skin, he could see blood. Tony looked to be moving okay, so the injury didn’t seem major. The suit was badly damaged though, likely the hit had taken Stark down.

“How long?” Steve asked, letting the unwarranted anger fall away.

“About 30 minutes I think.”

Steve lifted his fingers to his temple, they came way covered in blood. The blow had to have been pretty bad to knock him out for half an hour. He winced as Stark prodded at something on his side. He looked down. A hunk of shrapnel was sticking out of his side, just above his hip.

“Oh,” Steve said numbly.

“I pull this out, you gonna heal before you bleed out?” Stark asked calmly.

“Probably,” Steve answered. He wasn’t really sure, but he couldn’t go after Bucky till it was out.

Stark gave him an assessing look, before shrugging and pulling it out in one swift move.

Steve bit down on his tongue to stop from screaming, as Stark hastily put pressure on the wound. Steve let his mind drift, planning his next move as the pain dulled. Only dimly aware of Stark as he bound the wound to keep the worst of the bleeding under control.

“We really need to move,” Stark said once he seemed satisfied with his handiwork.

“Barton?” Steve asked.

“Gunshot wound was through and through, should heal. Got a bit banged up by the fall, but I think he’ll live.”

Steve nodded.

“Where would they take Bucky?”

“No clue, but I got a tracker on the truck before I went down. This suit’s toast though, need to make contact with JARVIS to see where they are.”

They both tensed as they heard a vehicle approaching. Stark handed him the shield he had apparently salvaged along with Steve from the wreckage, but it wasn’t necessary. Natasha jumped from the Jeep and ran to them, face carefully blank in that way Steve knew meant she was actually hiding a mass of emotion.

“Clint,” she whispered under her breath as she knelt by his side.

“He’ll live,” Stark replied to her unasked question. “So will Steve.”

“James?” She asked looking to Steve.

“They took him,” Stark answered when Steve couldn’t make himself say the words.

_......................_

Bucky woke to white light and pain. It was all too familiar. He tried to move, but his wrists and feet where restrained. He could feel straps across his chest and legs as well. His punctured lung was sending firebrands of pain shooting through his body on every breath, not helped by the restraints pulled too tight across his broken ribs.

He couldn’t move his head, couldn’t see much, but he could see enough. He was back in a lab, a hydra lab. He could hear people talking, discussing the asset.

It was all too familiar. Like he had never left.

Bucky screamed.

_......................_

The longer Natasha and Stark discussed tactics, the more rage built in Steve. Cold, burning rage edged with horror and terror. Right now he didn’t care one bit about what was left of SHEILD, what new mission they might want him for, what world ending event would bring the Avengers together next. Only one thing mattered.

He was not failing Bucky again.

This time he would not stop until he found him. No matter what.

Steve could barely stop his body trembling let alone assist in whatever plan Nat and Stark were coming up with. Tense muscles pulled at the hole in his side, but he barely felt it. He didn’t even jump when Barton suddenly appeared at his side.

“You going after him?” Barton asked quietly.

Steve nodded.

“You waiting for them?” Barton asked, leaning heavily against the doorframe next to Steve, glancing over to where Stark & Nat where still debating options.

Steve looked across at Barton, his face was pale, but he looked strong, unwavering on his feet despite the bruises already forming from his fall. His shoulder was strapped and in a sling. Steve didn’t answer, but Barton nodded anyway as if he had.

“Don’t have to do this alone, you know.” Barton’s uninjured hand was clenching and unclenching. “Sometimes we all need a little help…and you’re not the only one to want him back.”

Steve looked down. He had only been waiting for JARVIS to finish the trace on Stark’s tracker and he’d have been out the door. With or without the rest of the team. Bucky had been living at the Tower for almost six months. He wasn’t sure how he forgot that some of the team members had come to call Bucky a friend in his own right, and not just because of who he had once been to Steve.

Barton and Bucky rarely seemed to speak, but Steve had often gone looking for Bucky and found him perched in some vantage point with Barton. Somehow that shared solitude had formed a friendship between them Steve wasn’t quite sure he understood.

Steve didn’t say anything, just nodded. He doubted he would get out of the building without Barton following him anyway. The odds of success were better as a team. Steve knew that, even if waiting went against every instinct.

“Let them make a good plan to get your boy back,” Barton said quietly. “Keep that anger for Hydra. We might need it.”

It took five hours before they were ready. They had plans for the building where Hydra had taken Bucky, and a strategy for getting in. Steve would have argued if Barton was up to a rescue mission, but one look at his expression cut any argument short. He didn’t have his trademark bow, the shoulder injury ruling it out. Instead Barton had a sniper rifle, fingers gripping it tight. Steve was almost certain it was one of Bucky’s. Barton gave him a quick nod, they were bringing Bucky home.

It was maybe the first time Steve had thought of anywhere being home since he watched Bucky fall in ‘44.

_......................_

The building Hydra was holding Bucky in was an old factory, the whole place was abandoned, which was a good thing, Steve had no intention of this going quietly. They landed the Quinjet on the roof of an adjacent building. They could see the vehicles Hydra had used parked in what looked to be a delivery bay.

“At least a dozen heat signatures up top,” Stark said as he scanned the building. “Almost twice that many again down below.”

“Bucky?”

“Most likely….here,” Nat replied, tapping a point on the screen. “The most defensible part of the complex, blueprints say it was some kind of lab, probably has what they need to contain James. “

“Looks like three guards on the door, and maybe five inside. I’d say you’re right,” Clint added.

Steve studied the screen. Stark and Nat had detailed three different entry points to the building. It had two levels above ground, with another below. They had considered calling in Shield backup, but there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t be the Winter Soldier they found inside, not Bucky. The risk of unnecessary casualties wasn’t worth the backup.

“Barton, you cover the entry from above, take out who you can once they know we’re here, cover us when we come out if needed. Stark, take the delivery bay. Nat and I will go in from the roof, head straight for Bucky if we can.” The others all nodded in agreement.

Steve lost sight of Nat after they came through a duct into the basement level. He checked the blueprint on his tablet, the room they thought Bucky was in was down a corridor and through a large open room. No way to get there without being noticed. Steve gripped his shield tighter, he had more than enough anger for Hydra to do this the messy way.

Steve entered the room at speed, shield already in the air at the first guard he saw before anyone could react. After the first shot from a Hydra agent Steve could hear Stark and Barton start their attack from above as planned. He took down another Hydra agent with a left hook. He heard a scream from down a corridor. Bucky. The world seemed to shrink down to the Hydra agents between him and the direction Bucky’s scream had come from. Steve smashed his shield into the face of the closest Hydra, feeling bone crunch beneath it. He threw it, taking out the legs of another, before he felt a bullet graze his side and took a fist to the head, knocking loose his helmet.

Steve didn’t care how many Hydra agents he had to hack his way through, he was getting to Bucky.

_......................_

Bucky opened his eyes when he heard the men leave the room. He picked a flaking spot of paint on the ceiling and stared at it till he could get his breathing under control. In through the nose out through the mouth, again, in and out. It was something he learned a long time ago, pick some small thing that he could control and focus only on that. Didn’t always work, even something as simple as breathing hadn’t always been under his control.

He wouldn’t believe Steve, or Barton, or any of the others were dead till he saw bodies. They could taunt him, hurt him, it didn’t matter. Every muscle ached, his hands shook till he clenched them into fists. He closed his eyes. Breathe in, out.

The pain faded, not gone, simply pushed aside. That was something else he learned, sometimes the pain didn’t end. Scream, don’t scream, doesn’t really matter.

Breathe in, out.

He needed to pick his moment

He knew they had tried to trigger the asset, and it hadn’t worked. He wasn’t the asset. He was so much more. He was Bucky Barnes. He was the Winter Soldier. He’d had a mother, father, sisters. A best friend who always seemed to wind up in the middle of trouble, and James Barnes was nothing if not trouble.

Breathe in, out.

He was the weapon they had made, but he was done being controlled. Hydra might not like what they have created now the puppet’s slipped its strings. More men came back into the room, Bucky could hear the sound of gunfire as the door opened.

“Shield, we’re moving him. Now,” someone said.

Bucky smiled through the pain.

Breathe in, out.

_......................_

Everything was quite when Steve took out the last Hydra agent. The sounds that had been coming from the direction where he had heard Bucky scream when he first entered had stopped. His grip on the shield tightened as he shifted forward, fear making the distance seem impossible as he passed down a corridor. The room at the end was the only one with a light on, something told him it was the one he wanted. Steve’s fingers shook as he gripped the door handle. It was too quiet. There should be more Hydra agents if Stark’s scans had been correct, and they usually were. He opened the door expecting an attack.

There was no attack. There were no Hydra agents. At least none alive.

Bucky stood in the middle of the room, shoulders heaving with each breath, at least six bodies at his feet. Bucky’s metal arm was covered in blood. The red gliding down the silver surface in rivulets. He looked as deadly as he had when Steve first saw the Winter Soldier. A weapon, honed and perfected.

Steve hesitated, muscles stilled and ready to react if this wasn’t his friend but the Asset. He could see a slight tremor in Bucky’s hand as he pushed his hair back, pausing as if noticing the blood on it for the first time, before seeing Steve.

“Steve,” Bucky whispered, barely audible.

“Hey Buck,” Steve answered, breathing out slowly in relief that Bucky recognised him, given the circumstances.

“They tried to trigger me,” Bucky said quietly, swaying on his feet a little.

Steve swallowed thickly, images flicking through his mind of what that may have involved, and the consequences if it succeeded.

Bucky looked up, eyes haunted. “It didn’t work,” he said, small smile playing on his lips, his expression somewhere between confused wonder, and stubborn pride.

Bucky looked a little grey, and Steve could see now he was in pain, leaning one way a little too much. He realised Bucky could barely stand. He rushed to Bucky’s side, carefully putting an arm around him, any fear about the Asset resurfacing disappearing when he felt Bucky lean against him, though worry of a different sort settling in when he could feel the difficulties Bucky was having breathing.

Steve shifted Bucky’s weight to support him better, before calling in the all clear to the team.

“You look like shit,” Steve tried to joke, but it came out kind of strangled sounding as his voice caught.

“So do you,” Bucky replied with a huff that made him wince in pain.

“What do you say we get the hell out of here?”

“You offering to take me home Rogers?”

Steve couldn’t help smiling, even if it felt slightly manic. The words were all Bucky, even if the delivery was something new, a dark wry-ness that hadn’t been there seventy years ago. They weren’t kids helping each other home after a back alley fight anymore. Weren’t two soldiers leaning on each other after a battle somewhere in Italy. Somehow that didn’t matter, because as impossible as it was, they were both still here.

_......................_

Bucky hardly remembered getting out of the building. Letting the pain take him once he was safe. Natasha had briefly laid a hand on his shoulder, giving him a small nod before heading to the cockpit with Stark. Clint and Steve sat with him in the back as they flew back to the Tower. Bucky had no intention of going to hospital when Stark had a small emergency room at the Tower for the Avenger’s use. He didn’t care how much Steve frowned at him.

The drugs Clint had administered were kicking in, they wouldn’t last long with his metabolism, but it was enough for now. He noticed the rifle propped up next to Clint, one of Bucky’s favourites, and smiled. It was absurd. He was the Winter Soldier, the Asset, he had been taken apart and assembled into a weapon, but somehow here he was. Alive, free, and amongst friends. It almost didn’t seem possible.

_......................_

The night air was cool against Bucky’s skin. It had been over six months since his rescue from Utah, almost eighteen since the Winter Soldier came in. It felt like a lifetime and the blink of an eye at the same time. He swirled the vodka in his glass absently as Steve climbed out the window to sit next to him, their shoulders brushing together on the small ledge. Steve leant back against the wall, he looked tired. Bucky handed Steve his glass, smiling as he gulped it down.

“Bad day?” Bucky asked.

Steve shrugged. Sometimes he seemed to dislike words as much as Bucky. There are a lot of things they don’t talk about.

They don’t talk about the fact that whenever Bucky is away, the only place Steve can sleep is in Bucky’s bed. Just like they never talk about the fact that when Bucky returns, he crawls into bed next to Steve and falls asleep in a matter of seconds. That those are the only nights where Bucky doesn’t wake to sweat and screams. That more and more often lately when Bucky hunts down Hydra, Steve will be right there beside him, neither giving a damn if the mission is sanctioned or not. They don’t talk about the fact they are as likely to find Steve’s clothes on the bedroom floor as Bucky’s. They don’t talk about what that means. But that’s okay. Maybe there aren’t the right words to define what they are anyway. Maybe all they need is the comfort of the other’s warmth at their back, and the knowledge that there is always a messed up apartment waiting for them to come home to. Somehow that freedom lets Bucky find a peace that eases his restlessness.

Neither are the men they once were, and that’s okay. Maybe even broken things, men who were made and unmade by others can rebuild themselves anew. Can take back the strings, and dance to a tune of their own making, and decide who they want to be when their feet hit the ground again. Looking across at Steve, who seemed to already be almost asleep, Bucky smiled, for no other reason than he could. The kid from Brooklyn, the soldier, prisoner, the asset, killer, victim. The past be damned. Bucky was whoever the hell he wanted to be.

Right now, all he wanted to be was the guy sitting on a ledge above Manhattan next to Steve Rogers, enjoying the damn fine view.

So he was.


End file.
